


you hide this war

by spookykingdomstarlight



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Chance Meetings, Character Study, Drinking, Flirting, Guilt, M/M, Post-Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Pre-Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, Regret, Time Skips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-13 23:10:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13580892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookykingdomstarlight/pseuds/spookykingdomstarlight
Summary: Lando crossed his arms and, leaning forward, winked at DJ because it suited him to do just that. “I might not know what you did, kid, but I sure as hell know why. You give back what you took, you tell me what you did, and I promise you, I’ll merely be keeping my ear to the ground for the next great heist on Canto Bight and toast your good fortune when you pull it off.”





	you hide this war

**Author's Note:**

  * For [olio](https://archiveofourown.org/users/olio/gifts).



> Title from “Contra,” by Talos.

Lando didn’t often find his way down to Cloud City’s police station. There was often no point. His security people were top-notch, trained to detect even the slightest hint of bullshit and quash it with as deft and light a touch as possible in a place that could be as volatile as Cloud City was. Lando could run the smoothest ship in the galaxy, which he did, and it’d still run a risk or two, which he accepted. That was the price for their independence and non-interference. Anything could go wrong and they didn’t have Imperial—or Rebel, a small part of his mind reminded him, he’d burned a bridge or two on that side of things, too—support if the worst were to occur.

Most days, ‘the worst’ consisted of someone trying to start a fight with a rival at one of the bars.

But some days, it was… this.

“Hello, there,” he said, smiling at his sharply dressed law enforcement officers as they lingered around the counter, waiting for something to happen. And, oh, how the irony stung. He’d never appreciated them enough when he was on the other side of things. Now he knew they had their place, that they weren’t the bad guys in a story of hard-won freedom bought with fibs and stolen property. Well, they weren’t always bad. His people weren’t, not here. But corruption could corrupt anything, even laws, even the people who upheld them.

They wouldn’t have an emperor right now if corruption couldn’t reach into the very heart of goodness and twist it all the way around. Lando might not have been old enough to truly grasp the nuances of what happened after the Jedi purges, but he was no fool. Chancellor Palpatine had been loved; he’d been trusted. His home planet was still considered a paragon of Old Republic grandeur. Hell, sometimes even her senators, her queens, tried to stand up to their much loathed Emperor. Even now.

Not that senators and queens held much sway these days. Not with the Senate disbanded.

His grin turned sharp even as it widened. “I hear we’ve landed ourselves a rare breed of troublemaker today.”

They straightened up, every last one of them, but Lando waved them off. One remained a bit stiffer than the rest and nodded. Lieutenant Braetin. She’d always taken this a little more seriously than the rest. She said, “Yes, Baron Administrator. We don’t think he did any lasting damage, but we’ve got one of our slicers up there checking it out.”

“Good. Thank you.” He very carefully did not frown. The thing about criminals—and criminal slicers at that—was that nobody else could catch up with them. Whatever this guy had done, it was going to cost this city a lot of money. The only good thing about this whole situation was he’d gotten caught before he could complete his task.

Of course, Lando had to consider the very real possibility that getting nabbed was part of the plan and his people had done nothing more than further his aims. “Where have you stuck him?” he asked, refusing to consider that possibility too closely. It edged too much into territory that Baron Administrator Calrissian had no business finding intriguing. He’d put aside that life, turned over a new leaf. One that wouldn’t put his friends in danger or worse. No, he liked respectability, responsibility.

That didn’t mean he never felt a pang for what could have been. Or could still be if he walked away from this.

“Interrogation Room D,” Braetin replied. “I can show you if—”

Lando waved her off. “I know this city like the back of my hand, Lieutenant. I can find my way.”

“Of course, sir.” She flushed, but he did her the courtesy of ignoring it. Someone snickered, but he did her the courtesy of ignoring that as well. There were people who’d have wanted him to defend them. Braetin wasn’t one of them. She released the maglocks on the door into the detainment center. It hissed and clanked as it opened, as though displeased at being so disrupted.

Excepting the lone figure warbling from the drunk tank to Lando’s left, it was quiet in here. Too quiet. A prickle of unease crept up his spine. It wasn’t that he disliked the quiet, but he didn’t trust it. Some would say those were the same thing. Not Lando, no. Lando liked a lot of things he didn’t believe in. Maybe he was just on edge. Someone, someone Lando didn’t know, had managed to crack some pretty tight security protocols. Even Lobot was as flabbergasted by it as it was possible for him to get these days.

Anyone with this guy’s skills… Lando should have known him. Or at least heard of him. ‘DJ’ might not have been the most expressive of monikers, but it was hardly devoid of punch. He would’ve remembered a name like that if he’d come across it in his travels through the underbellies of society.

After a few more moments spent walking, he found his destination, a door and its accompanying panel with a brushed-metal placard with a ‘D’ engraved in it next to it. There were no windows that he could look into. Nothing to give an indication of the prisoner’s mood or temperament. All he’d seen was a blurry holo clipped from the cam droid feed before he’d decided he had to investigate for himself just what was going on. Now, he wished he’d prepared a little more.

Lando always had been a little on the impulsive side once he thought he knew everything he needed to know.

Smile firmly in place, he adjusted his cape and stepped inside. Whatever it was he expected, it certainly wasn’t a kid—twenty, maybe twenty-one, at most—grinning up at him. Black hair swirled around the crown of his head in a chaotic coif and a smile sat on his mouth that could’ve rivaled Lando’s for feigned innocence. That wasn’t what struck Lando, though, not in the slightest.

It was the anger that smoldered in his gaze. He tried to hide it beneath his congeniality, but Lando saw it anyway. It threatened to consume him. In fact, now that Lando looked, he could see that the smile was brittle, too, fragile. Like poking too hard would shatter it into a thousand pieces.

“You’re no lawman,” DJ said, sucking on his teeth. They glinted, malicious, when his smile widened. The lights were harsh, gave DJ all kinds of sharp edges that he didn’t naturally possess. He was too young for the knife points that formed from the arch of his cheekbones. Hell, the kid could barely grow facial hair, all smooth skin and wide, big eyes. Even so, Lando saw every bit of him for what he was. DJ was neither child nor mastermind, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t clever and dangerous. Lando couldn’t say he wasn’t moved by the juxtaposition of soft and hard, of cool and hot. “And you’re no mere gambler in my casino,” Lando answered. “How wonderful it is that we are more than what we seem.”

DJ sniffed and wiped his hand across his mouth. It barely hid the disdain he no doubt wanted Lando to see. He was cute, in a way. And something else entirely in another. The scoundrel in him wanted to poke and prod and maybe find DJ a way to be useful. The upstanding politician wanted to ensure this man experienced the full extent of the laws that governed Cloud City.

Neither side won in its entirety. Lando was so much more than the two sides of himself constantly at war with one another. If DJ understood anything about the galaxy, he’d be grateful to Lando for this.

He watched DJ until DJ shifted, fidgeting his fingers beneath the table. This was nothing new. Guilty people always gave themselves away and DJ was too green to know how to weaponize his tells yet. In another life—if they’d met a few years ago in this one perhaps—Lando might have taught him how to do it himself.

“Are you just going to stand there?” DJ asked. “Or will we be getting on with the breaking my kneecaps portion of the evening any time soon? I was s-so looking forward to institutionalized—”

Lando laughed, waving his hand through the air before taking hold of the empty chair across from DJ and sitting in it. “Whatever kind of operation you think it is I’m running here…” His hands opened, the universal sign that Lando had nothing to hide. “…you’ve got the wrong idea. Or you’ve watched a few too many holonovels in your spare time. I’m not a gangster.” That was one thing Lando would never have claimed to be, never wanted to be, and never would be. “I just want to know what you did and send you on your way.” His eyes narrowed. “You won’t be setting foot on my casino floors anymore, but something tells me you weren’t planning on staying too long anyway.”

If Lando knew one thing, it was this: there were far more lucrative fish in the sea. This guy was merely cutting his teeth, testing himself out on relatively safe proving grounds. Anyone who really wanted to get into Lando’s systems, well. If he was this good—and Lando trusted Lobot’s analyses on the matter—he could’ve done way, way more damage than he did.

DJ merely tipped his chin up, another give away. Look at all that pride he kept locked away inside of him. Stars, this guy was precious. Lando almost wanted him to stick around. He always had liked potential.

Lando crossed his arms and, leaning forward, winked at DJ because it suited him to do just that. “I might not know what you did, kid, but I sure as hell know why. You give back what you took, you tell me what you did, and I promise you, I’ll merely be keeping my ear to the ground for the next great heist on Canto Bight and toast your good fortune when you pull it off.”

DJ’s brow arched and his lips thinned and pinched in turn as he considered it. “This deal is getting lousier all the time,” he said finally. “A minute ago you only wanted to know what I did.”

Lando’s eyes sparkled. He knew they sparkled because he wanted them to sparkle. “I suppose the rest is negotiable,” he said, reasonable. The credits were nothing. Sure, he might lose a lot of them, but he made a whole lot more in the long run. He might’ve been running a small ship here, but they got by. But if he could get DJ to tell him how? That was definitely valuable. Credits were cheap. Sophisticated slicer techniques? Those were rarer. If Lobot were himself these days, he’d have loved it. “What do you say?”

DJ scrubbed at the soft, smooth line of his jaw. “I s’pose I’ve made worse deals in my time,” he said, before launching into what Lando suspected was a scrubbed version of his technique. There was enough, Lando also suspected, for Lobot to get started with anyway.

Yeah, he’d definitely be toasting DJ’s good fortune in the future. The kid was going places.

In another life, Lando would’ve been right there with him.

*

Lando never liked Canto Bight, but he found it especially useless now. Too gauche. Too sparkling. Too up its own ass about its own cleverness. Evil people existed the galaxy over. None of them patted themselves on the back nearly as hard as the glimmering arms-dealers and cheaters who called this place home. He more than held his own against it. These days, Lando knew his limits, knew what he did and did not want, and, most importantly, had a soft place to land. Going legitimate had done wonders for him. He wasn’t about to kriff it up with a crooked card game.

The younger version of him who existed in the back of his mind to remind him of his past glories was both enamored of Lando’s restraint and despondent of it. So many possibilities existed here and so few rules as to make the whole exercise of law and order a moot point. Now that Lando had the resources to play on Cantonica’s artificial beaches, he could do so well. If only he’d bend just a little bit…

He chose not to, of course. he knew better now and this was a business trip after all. As such, he knew how to conduct himself.

The sabacc table at Canto Casino might have called to him, its song beloved and well-known to him, but he had more important things to do here. Derla Pidys waited for no one. If he wanted what she was willing to sell to him, he’d show her the respect she deserved.

You wouldn’t have thought that the buying and selling of liquor could be fraught, but it was the same as any lucrative field. Cutthroat, demanding, high stakes. He might’ve hated flogging the galaxy for rarer and rarer alcohols for his increasingly picky patrons, but the money was good in it and Derla was the best, though few enough people knew it yet. One day, she would be so well known as to be impossible to continue buying from her the way he did, but right now, he had her practically to himself.

Lando stopped, his forward progress toward the casino exit halted by instinct and a shock of black hair. He never forgot a face and the face that just crossed his peripheral vision…

He glanced at his pocket chrono and smiled. He supposed he had a few minutes to catch up with an old friend.

Veering to follow, he jammed his hands in his pockets, real casual like. It took him a moment to dredge up the man’s name—he was great with faces, only moderately less so with names—but when he did, he grinned all the wider. It drew the attention of a handful of nearby patrons. Pleasant, he nodded at them and promptly dismissed them from his thoughts.

It looked like DJ had done at least moderately well for himself. The suit he wore fit with at least the precision of a well-calibrated tailoring droid. The tails of the jacket rippled against the back of his thighs and tickled at his knees. He’d found decent posture somewhere along the way.

Lando would’ve bet every credit he had that DJ was up to no good whatsoever.

His legs stretched to catch up and a hand on DJ’s elbow startled the man enough that his own gait stalled and started. His head whipped around and for a moment, he looked as young as Lando remembered, and more wide-eyed. Innocent, even. “What in the—” He narrowed his eyes. Annoyed now, he definitely looked older. A rakish scruff shadowed his jaw and there were a few, very appealing lines around his eyes. “Oh, it’s you.”

“Long time,” Lando said, pleased to have been remembered.

“Very long time,” DJ agreed, distracted as he scanned the room. He didn’t look suspicious exactly, but he wasn’t doing himself any favors either. “What are you doing here?”

Lando laughed and lifted his hands. “Not stopping you from whatever it is you’re doing.” His gaze raked up and down DJ’s body. The suit really did do something good for him. From the front, it was even better, followed the sleek lines of his shoulder down to his torso. “Looking good, by the way.”

“T-thank you,” he answered, not sounding unhappy in the slightest at the compliment. There was even a hint of a blush on his cheeks. He was older now, but not much more hardened than the last time they’d met. The shine hadn’t yet gone from the galaxy for him. It would before too long. Lando hoped he enjoyed these comparatively innocent days while they lasted. “But I do have a job to do.”

“Who doesn’t?”

DJ’s brow arched at the same incredulous angle Lando remembered. “Most of the people here are only throwing their money at the slots.”

“Oh, they’re definitely working. They just don’t realize it.” Lando reached into his pocket and pulled out a business card. The sleek flimsi was a relatively new addition to his life. So many people in these post-war days wanted his attention that it became easier to hand these out than rattle off his contact information every time. “Find me later. I owe you a congratulatory drink.”

DJ took the card between two slim, clever fingers and spirited it so smoothly into his jacket that Lando almost didn’t see it disappear. “Job’s not done yet,” he pointed out.

“Something tells me it will be.”

They parted ways with a conspiratorial nod between them and Lando found himself holding back genuine pleasure at the thought of what was coming. He rarely had anything to truly look forward to. Now that everything had settled down, the Imperial remnants driven off, there wasn’t anything to stop Lando from going back to the way things were, safe now in the knowledge that the Empire couldn’t twist his arm any longer.

Derla may have commented, as soon as he found her in Ubialla Gheal’s latest endeavor. She’d changed the décor again. “You look far more pleased with yourself than usual,” she said, kind. It surprised him that Derla so enjoyed to conduct her work here on Canto Bight. She was so much… more than the trappings of this place. “Should I be worried?”

“Not at all,” he replied, taking a seat across from her. “You know me, Derla.” He slid a credit chit across the table toward her. The faster they completed this transaction, the sooner they could get onto more enjoyable terrain. “Though I do have an unexpected request if you might indulge me.”

Derla’s upper eyes blinked. “Of course, Lando,” she said, pasting on the sort of voice that Lando knew for himself was her very best customer service tone. He could almost hear the way she didn’t say, _anything for a valued patron_. “I can’t say I’m not intrigued.” Lando heard here, too, what else she didn’t say: _is there a problem?_

He leaned against the cushion of his seat and braced his arms against the high back of the booth, wide and open, nothing to see here. “I was wondering if you might have a bottle or two of champagne you might be willing to part with. Truly good champagne, not necessarily the most impressive champagne.”

Though he didn’t know many beings of her species, he recognized what he thought was a smile crossing her mouth. “You must be very discerning if you choose to make that distinction.”

Lando laughed, full-throated and well. Oh, how he’d not missed this at all. Back in the Rebellion, no one had seen the need to charm him. Now, though, Baron Administrator Calrissian fielded all sorts of people wanting favors from him, flattering him in the hopes of getting something out of him. Derla was better at it than most admittedly, but it still grated. “It’s just habit for you, isn’t it?” he asked. “Flattery?”

One day, he thought, she wouldn’t have to flatter anyone. They would flatter her for the mere chance at purchasing the wares she brought to them. They would seek her out and jump through every hoop she put in front of them for the pleasure of it. He remembered that day himself and still wondered at it sometimes.

“Not at all,” she replied. “It’s still a practice I am unaccustomed to.”

He smiled and he didn’t tell her what he knew in his heart: that she would not need to practice for long. Instead, he slid a second credit chit toward her. Enough for the right kind of champagne and a little extra, too. “Can you do it?”

She sniffed and both sets of eyes rolled. “Just what do you take me for? You’ll have the finest bottle in your suite by the time you return to it. But first…” She waved over one of Gheal’s exceedingly skilled bartenders. “Shall we share a toast to another fine business transaction?”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” he said, just as she must have known he would.

A snifter of truly exquisite brandy later, he was feeling warm and languid and happier than he’d been in a very long time. He did so love a clean bit of work. So much less messy than the Rebellion had been or the time before. He could run his city sharp and his personal interactions even sharper. Everything had a place and everyone behaved rationally, civilly. At one time, he might have scoffed at respecting structure so much. But now…

Now he relished it. Now, simplicity reigned and the things that excited him were the sort of things that excited most normal people. Good work and a job well done. That was all he could ask for in this life.

He returned to his suite in the Canto Casino after a stroll along the criminal-infested boulevards, passing the time by giving them a run for their credits for a change. Overpriced as the Canto Casino’s hotel might have been, it remained his favorite. Something about the beds were just…

Well.

This one came with a fetching addition, he supposed. At least for tonight. Because on the bed lounged DJ, a champagne flute in hand and Derla’s fine taste in champagne fizzing inside of it. His legs were crossed at the ankles and his jacket was tossed, haphazard, across the chair near the window. “Your c-champagne is too nice,” he said. “Who wants to celebrate by getting drunk on something so expensive?”

Lando released the clasp on the cape around his shoulders and hung the entire contraption on the coat hook by the door. Next, he loosened his tie. This, he tossed at the table. It landed near the edge and slipped off the side and Lando couldn’t bring himself to care about that fact. “You don’t know much about champagne, do you?”

DJ peered at him and then into the slim glass that turned between his deft, clever fingers. “Enough to know when you’ve paid too much for it. I’ve had better for free at one of the… less desirable casinos in town. Shall we say that?”

“You don’t know what I paid.”

“Anything is too much.”

He walked toward the bed, plucked the glass from DJ’s fingers. He allowed his lips to cover the portion of the glass DJ had already sipped from. DJ’s eyes widened a little bit with interest and intrigue. Good. “You’re full of shit.” Sophisticated flavors burst across his tongue, bright as sunshine. He tasted sour-sweet fruit and acid-tart bubbles, all of it undercut with honey. It wasn’t a champagne that Lando was familiar with, but it was every bit as good as Lando would have expected from Derla and then some. “This is fine.”

DJ grinned, stretching upward to take the glass back. “And you got it f-for me.”

“Stars know why,” Lando answered, dry.

“You don’t enjoy debts.” DJ sounded more serious than Lando might have expected him to. He tried not to read into it, but…

It was like prodding at an inscrutable painting. You couldn’t ask the artist, of course, and you could tell there was meaning hidden somewhere in all those layers of paint or light or chalk, whatever medium the artist had chosen, but it was at such a skewed angle—or so haphazardly, inexpertly done—that you couldn’t be sure what you were looking at was what you were looking at. Lando liked those kinds of paintings. They were interesting. It didn’t bother him that they reminded him that sometimes, he might not be the smartest man in the room. But that didn’t stop him from wanting to know. “You know a lot about debt?”

Feigning disinterest, he picked up the rather empty bottle of champagne and poured himself a glass. How long had DJ been here, he wondered. Long enough to start celebrating his victory well ahead of Lando.

“I know I prefer freedom to p-promises. Owing people was never my style.”

Lando thought about that for a moment. A part of him didn’t disagree. The rest of him wouldn’t be here now if he didn’t obligate himself to greater things. If he hadn’t screwed over his friends, consciously decided he owed them, where would he be? “Sounds lonely,” he settled on. Not exactly noncommittal, but close to it.

DJ’s smile turned lascivious. “Not as lonely as you’d think.”

Lando was good at reading people, even people as mysterious as DJ, and despite DJ’s words, Lando knew with sudden certainty that that wasn’t true in the slightest, that DJ was posturing at best, if not actively deluding himself. A pang of something sharp and hot pierced Lando’s chest. He brushed it aside as best he could. In that moment, he saw every mistake DJ could or would make—they were the same mistakes Lando might have made once upon a time—and he knew exactly how to stop them.

If only DJ would listen.

But this was the sort of thing you had to muddle through for yourself. Lando could talk until he was blue in the face and DJ had no reason to listen to him, no reason to believe Lando at all. Lando couldn’t save DJ from himself, but he could…

Well, they could have a good time together anyway. It wasn’t Lando’s job to save people anymore. And he’d never got it into his head to save people who didn’t want it. Some folks did. Built temples to their own savior complexes. Happened quite a bit in the Rebellion, if Lando was being quite honest. Often the younger folks, the ones still with people on the other side, the ones who hadn’t lost everything and still believed they could win it all back if they played their cards right.

Lando wasted the champagne Derla had so thoughtfully procured for him, swallowing the vast majority of it in one gulp rather than savoring it. The bubbles burned the back of his throat. “I’ll have room service send up another bottle,” he said, unnecessarily. There wouldn’t be anymore drinking tonight, not if Lando had his way, but best to be prepared. “Your choice this time, since you have such a discerning palate.”

When Lando leaned over the bed, hand pulling at the stiff collar of DJ’s shirt, DJ didn’t seem to care one way or the other about champagne or anything else. He certainly didn’t try to argue about it when, instead, he could kiss Lando back.

Though DJ tried to slip out in the morning, the unopened bottle of champagne under his arm—none of this surprised Lando, by the way—Lando was already awake, prepared with caf and an understanding smile. “Stay free, DJ,” he said, tipping his mug against his temple, just about the only blessing he thought DJ would accept, never mind that nothing about DJ screamed freedom to him.

Lando really hoped for the best for him. There was a good man buried somewhere under all that disinterest and there was no better time in recent history to be a good man.

*

The bar was a dingy affair, lit by ancient, overhead lights, the glass tubes of the bulbs yellowed with age. A hum, conspicuously timeless, churned deep inside of those lights. It was a wonder they hadn’t yet burned out. It was a surprise that anyone could stand to be here. There was only so much of that low, insistent sound that the jukebox could cover.

It wasn’t the sort of place Lando frequented much anymore. Or, at all. In his younger days, sure. He’d spent the vast majority of his time in establishments with poor reputations and worse. He still knew how to walk around them and remain relatively unscathed. Don’t show too much interest in the other patrons. Don’t stiff your tab. Don’t brush up against anyone you weren’t willing to fight. More often than not back then, Lando hadn’t heeded his own advice and experience. And sometimes he came out of these places a little lighter in the credit pouch and a little tenderer in the bits of him that made an easy target—namely, his face.

Now he did everything possible to avoid both of those things. As much as it pained his vainer parts to admit, it was easier at his age to go around unnoticed. Gray shot through his hair and there were a few more wrinkles to contend with. Few people, then, considered him a threat. They simply wrote him off as an old man, no threat to anyone.

It was a mistake he hadn’t had to rectify yet, but with the First Order chewing through territories daily, it really was only a matter of time before he’d have to remind someone that Lando Calrissian was not to be fucked with.

Until then, he smoothed his way with dashing, humble smiles and pretty words. It got him into and out of places that people like Leia or, say, the vast majority of her too-young, too-earnest Rebels couldn’t.

He didn’t mind doing this for her; in fact, he wished there was more that she would allow. But through the scattered, static-ridden messages they exchanged—it was hard to get anything through so many layers of encryption and decryption protocols, no matter how sophisticated the technology—she always insisted she needed someone she trusted on the outside.

And so out here he stayed. Sometimes, he recruited. Sometimes, he shifted contraband. Sometimes, he conjured credits out of nothing and sent them through shell corporation after shell corporation until, one day, they landed in Resistance-owned accounts, accessible still despite the First Order’s best efforts to curb seditious activity. And sometimes… sometimes he played information broker for her, too.

He’d been told he would find his contact in a booth at the back of the bar, the shadowiest corner of it, no doubt—it was always the same, no matter when or where or why, always the back, always the shadows—and that he would have to be here—he glanced at his chrono—just now exactly. At first, he saw merely a brownish blob shifting in the dark. And then the blob leaned forward, one pale hand gesturing in the scant bar of light above the booth. And then, through the blurry patches of shadow that cloaked his contact’s face, he could see familiar lines, familiar curves. Like something out of a dream, he didn’t belong in this time or this place.

Except for how he so perfectly belonged in just such a time and just such a place.

He knew this man. In a way, he’d always known him.

“Looking a little rough,” he said, sliding into the side of the booth opposite DJ. “Good to see you though.”

DJ startled a little, wouldn’t meet Lando’s eyes. He looked cagey in the way career criminals often did. Whether it was because times of peace didn’t suit him or war, Lando hadn’t yet decided. Some people didn’t know what to do when there was no chaos to manipulate. And some people didn’t know what to do when a yolk was thrown across the neck of the entire galaxy. They’d both of them seen their fair share of both of those situations, but only one of them knew how to adapt.

DJ was not the sort who adapted. He kept to his principles even when they looked poised to destroy him. There were bags under his eyes now, bruising in their intensity, and where before there had been a ready smile, now all Lando saw was a slashing frown pulled across his face by the weight of so many years. Whatever it was he’d been up to, it can’t have been good.

“I w-wasn’t expecting you,” he mumbled finally. His gaze skittered across the surface of the table from one corner to the other.

“And who were you expecting instead?”

“One of G-general Organa’s lackeys.” His voice grew more hushed though Lando would have bet he’d set up a noise-dampening field as a protection measure. He wafted his hand through the air, nervous. “Who the fuck do you think?”

Lando laughed, his hand scrubbing across his jaw. “Hate to break it to you, but…” He shrugged then, letting it hang between them. Of course Lando was one of her lackeys. What else would he be? She and her Rebellion had helped him find himself, clarify the best parts and abandon the rest. She’d helped him find who he’d wanted to be ever since that mess with Palpatine’s twice-damned pleasure yacht.

He owed her. He owed all of them. The scorecard might have long since accounted all debts paid, but Lando… he couldn’t sit by any while everyone he cared about risked their necks. For every minute of safety bought with Han’s life and Luke’s and the lives of so many brave people he didn’t know, he owed them in return.

Poking his nose into a bar on some backwater was the least he could do in return for the blood that has been spilled on all of their behalves.

“You’re no lackey.”

“And you’re no informant,” Lando answered, cool and collected, “the last time I checked.”

“We all have our b-bad days, Baron Administrator.”

“It’s Governor now actually, but you’re always welcome to call me Lando, of course.”

Something almost like a smile crossed DJ’s face. It reminded Lando of better times, of more innocent times. If innocent was the right word for them. They were certainly less complicated. Lando wished he had reason to make DJ smile, but he had a job to do here and it didn’t include…

Well, it wasn’t so very hard to figure out, was it? He’d heard about the failed Resistance mission to the _Supremacy._ He’d heard about the slicer who’d nearly ruined everything for the brave fools who’d tried to save them all by going into the belly of that beast. It wasn’t hard to see the guilt etched in the lines of his face and reach the right conclusion.

His stomach roiled. There was a time when he might have become the man sitting across from him. Might have done the exact same sort of thing he’d done.

It didn’t excuse what DJ did. And possibly nothing would.

Lando thought it was a good sign that DJ was here anyway.

“I can’t pay you,” Lando said, though of course that was a lie. Lando had offered to fund this exchange himself, but Leia had told him that was unnecessary. Though he’d believed her, that didn’t sit right with him. Sometimes, people weren’t looking to be paid, but that didn’t mean they shouldn’t be.

“I’m not here to be p-paid.”

Everyone needed something. But apparently DJ didn’t need what he’d always needed before. Or perhaps he did, but he wasn’t willing to push for it. Lando didn’t have time to discover the truth. His flight window was short and he needed to be back at his ship inside of the hour.

“The Rebellion thanks you for your help today.” The word still sat strangely in his mouth. Resistance. Rebellion. They were the same thing in the end, weren’t they? Still, Lando freed a credit chit from the inside of his jacket and slid it across the table. It wouldn’t give DJ the relief he sought, but it could buy him a bit of time and security if he needed it.

It was the only thing he could do.

He wished there was more. More than that, he wished he’d done something back when it might have done some good. But wishing for things you had no possibility of getting was a sucker’s game and he didn’t have time for that.

That was the trouble with war; there was no time for anything.

He stood and DJ kept his word, handing over his own chit. Their eyes met and Lando reached for him, clasping him on the shoulder. There was nothing Lando could say that would make DJ feel better. One day he would feel he’d made it right enough—or he wouldn’t. There were no words to make up for betrayal. “This will help,” he said anyway, as comforting as he knew how to be.

“The Resistance? Or me?”

“Both,” Lando answered. Then, a pause. “I hope…”

“What?”

Lando shook his head. It didn’t really matter, did it? DJ had done bad things. And a few good ones. “May the Force be with you,” he said instead, so much less than what he meant. And so much more. “One day the calculus will make sense. Or you’ll make it make sense. That’s how you get through.”

DJ licked his lips; his hand wrapped around Lando’s wrist and squeezed briefly.

“See you around, DJ,” Lando said when DJ didn’t reply.

He hoped they would.

If they did, it would be under better circumstances. The First Order wouldn’t give DJ much choice in the matter if he didn’t turn around.

“Stay safe,” he couldn’t help but add.

He really would like to see DJ again.


End file.
